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Bed-Stuy Activist Could be Honored With Street Name 20 Years After Death

By Natalie Musumeci | September 25, 2014 2:41pm
 Bed-Stuy residents are pushing to co-name a stretch of Myrtle Avenue Mae Miller Way in honor of the late Mae Miller, who served as the president of the Tompkins Houses Tenant Association.
Bed-Stuy residents are pushing to co-name a stretch of Myrtle Avenue Mae Miller Way in honor of the late Mae Miller, who served as the president of the Tompkins Houses Tenant Association.
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DNAinfo/Natalie Musumeci

BEDFORD-STUYVESANT — A Bed-Stuy activist who died more than 20 years ago could have a neighborhood street named in her honor.

An online petition launched on Sept. 22 is calling for a stretch of Myrtle Avenue between Tompkins Avenue and Throop Avenue to be co-named Mae Miller Way as a tribute to the late Mae Miller, who supporters say was the “backbone” of the community.

“The older residents were always talking about this woman, so I wanted to do something that would continue her legacy,” said Ephraim Benton, 36, of the group Beyond Influencing Da Hood which created the petition along with residents of Bed-Stuy’s Tompkins Houses.

Miller, who died in the early 1990s, served as president of the Tompkins Houses Tenant Association from the 1950s throughout the 1980s when the area was rampant with crime, residents said.

Benton, who never met Miller but moved into the Tompkins Houses with his family in 1994, said that the honor is long overdue.

“She really cared and fought for her people,” he said.

In 1977, Miller spearheaded an effort to purchase video surveillance with the help of city funds for the development’s eight high-rise buildings.

She also worked to transform an unused storage unit inside the city housing project into a tenant patrol room where three volunteers on six-hour shifts kept track of the comings and goings of building residents via monitors.

“They should honestly rename [Tompkins Houses] after her,” said Arthur Smith, 49, who remembers Miller as the “Mayor” of the neighborhood when he was growing up.

“She was very hands on as far as the community goes and she knew everyone’s family by name.”

The Change.org petition calls upon the City Council, Councilman Robert Cornegy (D-Bed-Stuy) and Community Board 3 to support the effort.

Cornegy said that he backs the group’s street co-naming plan.

“I believe in community, self-determination and fully support Beyond Influencing Da Hood’s effort to memorialize longtime NYCHA tenant leader Mae Miller through a street co-naming,” he said in a statement.

Community Board 3 Chair Tremaine Wright said that the board takes no position on street co-naming applications until after there is a public hearing on the matter.